[billmalarky]

Hi Swyx I always appreciate your insights, something you wrote really resonated with a personal theory I've been developing:

>"While I never use AI for personal writing (because I have a strong belief in writing to think)"

The optimal AI productivity process is starting to look like:

AI Generates > Human Validates > Loop

Yet cognitive generation is how humans learn and develop cognitive strength, as well as how they maintain such strength.

Similar to how physical activity is how muscles/bone density/etc grow, and how body tissues maintain.

Physical technology freed us from hard physical labor that kept our bodies in shape -- at a cost of physical atrophy.

AI seems to have a similar effect for our minds. AI will accelerate our cognitive productivity, and allow for cognitive convenience -- at a cost of cognitive atrophy.

At present we must be intentional about building/maintaining physical strength (dedicated strength training, cardio, etc).

Soon we will need to be intentional about building/maintaining cognitive strength.

I suspect the workday/week of the future will be split on AI-on-a-leash work for optimal productivity, with carve-outs for dedicated AI-enhanced-learning solely for building/maintaining cognitive health (where productivity is not the goal, building/maintaining cognition is). Similar to how we carve out time for working out.

What are your thoughts on this? Based on what you wrote above, it seems you have similar feelings?

Is there a name for this theory?

If not can you coin one? You're great at that :)

[tailspin2019]

This is very interesting - I like the way you’ve explained this.

The parallel with “intentionally working out to maintain physical strength” is extremely helpful as an analogy to communicate this concept.

That’s exactly what we might be faced with… cognitive atrophy…

It’s arguably already started, and is accelerating!

[swyx]

thanks very much :)

problem with your theory is it bundles 2-3 steps which each could be their own theses

suggest you nail those down before building up to a general bundle (or mental model/framework)

[billmalarky]

Ah, I probably should have listed some of the "assumptions" I'm developing it on top of:

1) Regarding the "generation is how learning occurs" claim, I'm going off of this:

https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2024/3/7/how-does-re...

Granted, that article refers to retrieval specifically being one major way we learn, and of course learning incorporates many dimensions. But it seems a bit self-evident that retrieval occurs heavily during active problem solving (ie "generation"), and less so during passive learning (ie: just reading/consuming info).

From personal experience, I always noticed I learned much more by doing than by consuming documentation alone.

But yes, I admit this assumption and my own personal experience/bias is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me...

2) Regarding the "optimal AI productivity process" (AI Generates > Human Validates > Loop)

I'm using Karpathy's productivity loop described in his AI startup school talk last month here:

https://youtu.be/LCEmiRjPEtQ?t=1327

Does this help make it more concrete Swyx (name dropping you here since I'm pretty sure you've got a social listener set for your handle ;)? Love to hear your thoughts straight from the hip based on your own personal experiences.

Full disclosure: I'm not trying to get too academic about this. In all honestly I'm really trying to get to an informal theory that's useful and practical enough that it can be turned into a regular business process for rapid professional development.